"There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it"
About this Quote
Diderot suggests a paradox of ethics: a moral precept that never costs anyone anything is empty. Rules that tell us what to do only matter when they restrain appetite, slow advantage, or expose us to risk. Honesty pinches when a lie would smooth things over. Justice bites when favoritism would reward friends. Keeping promises is easy when it is convenient and hard precisely when it matters. The inconvenience is the mark that morality is doing work.
As a leading light of the French Enlightenment and editor of the Encyclopedie, Diderot spent his career prying ethics loose from religious dogma and grounding it in human experience. He distrusted absolute formulas that ignore circumstances, yet he also knew that without some firm demands, ethics dissolves into whim. Calling moral precepts inconvenient does not dismiss them; it situates them in the frictions of real life. A rule worthy of the name imposes a burden, and the burden is often what protects others from our impulses or reins in the powerful on behalf of the vulnerable. That inconvenience can fall on the agent, on bystanders, or on institutions that benefit from silence; truth-telling, for instance, inconveniences not only the teller but also authorities who prefer obscurity to scrutiny. Diderot knew this firsthand, battling censorship that made the pursuit of knowledge a civic and personal hazard.
He also recognized that inconvenience can signal a bad rule. If a precept systematically burdens the many for the ease of the few, it deserves critique. The task is prudence: to judge which inconveniences cultivate a more humane world and which merely sanctify habit or hierarchy. In works like Rameaus Nephew he stages the clash between cynical self-interest and moral restraint, conceding the real costs of virtue while refusing to sneer at it. Moral life, then, is the art of bearing and fairly distributing inconvenience. A precept that never asks us to change, pay, or pause is not guidance but flattery.
As a leading light of the French Enlightenment and editor of the Encyclopedie, Diderot spent his career prying ethics loose from religious dogma and grounding it in human experience. He distrusted absolute formulas that ignore circumstances, yet he also knew that without some firm demands, ethics dissolves into whim. Calling moral precepts inconvenient does not dismiss them; it situates them in the frictions of real life. A rule worthy of the name imposes a burden, and the burden is often what protects others from our impulses or reins in the powerful on behalf of the vulnerable. That inconvenience can fall on the agent, on bystanders, or on institutions that benefit from silence; truth-telling, for instance, inconveniences not only the teller but also authorities who prefer obscurity to scrutiny. Diderot knew this firsthand, battling censorship that made the pursuit of knowledge a civic and personal hazard.
He also recognized that inconvenience can signal a bad rule. If a precept systematically burdens the many for the ease of the few, it deserves critique. The task is prudence: to judge which inconveniences cultivate a more humane world and which merely sanctify habit or hierarchy. In works like Rameaus Nephew he stages the clash between cynical self-interest and moral restraint, conceding the real costs of virtue while refusing to sneer at it. Moral life, then, is the art of bearing and fairly distributing inconvenience. A precept that never asks us to change, pay, or pause is not guidance but flattery.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|
More Quotes by Denis
Add to List
